Ottawa’s Knyota Drinks uses Digital Main Street grant to workwith digital marketing

Ottawa’s Knyota Drinks, a carefully curated selection of Cabernet Sauvignons and Rosés sit side by side with bottled cocktails, blonde ales, and IPAs. It’s an eclectic mix, some local and others from far away, but there’s one thread tying them together: everything sold in the bottle shop is alcohol-free. It’s one of the first alcohol-free bottle shops in Canada.

“My ego is not big enough to accept that,” says Benson Mutalemwa, owner of Knyota Drinks. “It might be true… maybe I'm the one person that was comfortable enough with the risk to actually open a store like this… but I do know we’re definitely unique.” 

It was fatherhood that initially spurred Mutalemwa to look into other beverage options. But non-alcoholic drinks were hard to come by, especially high-quality ones.

“Grocery stores are starting to have more options but they're not the people that are super passionate about it,” says Mutalemwa.

When he did find non-alcoholic drinks in grocery stores, they often felt like an afterthought, something some customers asked for so the grocery store acquiesced and tucked them at some ‘poorly-lit shelf in the back.' He found himself turning to online orders for a better selection and found a growing community of non-drinkers.  

As his passion grew, Mutalemwa saw an opportunity in non-alcoholic drinks. He started an online shop of his own in 2021, calling it Knyota Drinks (“little star” in Swahili, a nod to Tanzania where he was raised before moving to Canada in 2006). He began selling a diverse selection of non-alcoholic drinks, mocktails, and beverages from the growing functional drinks category which includes drinks with adaptogens, vitamins, and probiotics.  

“When I opened an online store, it was a test to say, okay, do I have what it takes to do this?” says Mutalemwa, who spent the majority of his career in finance. “The online business was not an astounding success by any measures, but it was interesting enough to say, hmm, from a business perspective, I can see that there are good margins and growth.” 

But he knew the true opportunity was in the customer experience. Online was one thing, but could he pull it off in person?

“At the end of 2021, I really started thinking about finding a good location where I could open a physical store and offer some product tasting,” says Mutalemwa. It also allowed people to just grab a few cans rather than making a big online purchase like a lot of the online shops incentivized with free shipping. “I always thought that a (physical location) would be a better experience for the customers.” 

With a background in finance and a foundation in marketing through courses he took in university, the Knyota Drinks owner was able to plot out a digital strategy for his new physical location. However, he saw an opportunity to audit his approach when he found out about Digital Main Street, a program combining grants and one-to-one support from the Province of Ontario alongside partners to help main street businesses strengthen their online capabilities and plan for the digital future.

“Digital Main Street helped alleviate a lot of insecurities that I had,” he says. “Here’s someone who’s doing this day-in, day-out and they’re suggesting things I’m (already thinking) – it makes you so worried about the experiment or what you're doing because someone who does this has come in and confirmed that this is how you should be doing it.” 

Mutalemwa applied for and received the $2,500 Digital Transformation Grant and digital training, helping him fine-tune his digital plan. He used some of the funding to hire a consultant to help him with SEO and some social media advertising. “It was really helpful to have the money to be able to do digital advertising, hire a consultant and observe all of it at the same time.” 

Through the process, he realized social media advertising wasn’t really yielding the right results but Digital Main Street gave him an opportunity to explore the business’s trajectory.

“Because it wasn't money out of my pocket, it was easier to experiment with things,” he says. “Now I'm in a better position to choose what I should do next.”

 

If you're looking for a carefully curated selection of non-alcoholic beverages, check out Knotya Drinks. 

To learn more about the Digital Transformation Grant, and how it can help your business visit here.